Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting an Ebay Business

5 star:		(3)
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3 star:		(1)
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Covers all the basics of starting an online ebay business, from insurance coverage and handling sales tax quirks between states to advertising, promotion, accepting and pursuing payments and more. Those who recall the old ebay auction-only model will find much changed: you can now set up a shop with fixed prices on ebay and Starting An eBay Business covers both stores and auction formats.

This guide assumes nothing about your level of internet experience or how much you already know about the kind of business you want to run, and that's both a positive and a negative. On the one hand, if you're new to the internet and want to make money on eBay (after all, it can be a great boon to disabled and housebound people), you'll probably be grateful for such basic information as how to register for a PayPal account and how to determine what you might want to sell. On the other hand, if you already have some internet experience and a basic idea of what you want to sell, then a good portion of this book will be irrelevant to you.

A pet peeve of mine in such guides is the screen-by-screen walk-through of website registration processes and the like. If you can't figure out how to make it through the well-labeled form of a registration process, you're unlikely to have the brainpower to run your own business. In addition, websites change frequently. If there are folks out there who need to be hand-held through the process of signing up for an eBay account, then those same folks are presumably going to flounder if they get to said process and the form doesn't look like the screenshot in the book. Usually CIG's are good about not including so much of this kind of space-waster.

While it's true that plenty of other information in here will also change (such as monthly fees for various services), such information is at least moderately useful since it'll give the reader a ballpark idea of, say, what they might expect to pay for various types of eBay accounts or storefronts. Do remember to double-check any fees, terms of use, etc. rather than assuming they'll remain unchanged from whatever's in the book.

This is definitely a handy book---don't get me wrong. And if you're starting from zero with no experience in running a business, selling online, using PayPal, etc., then it's probably exactly what you want. It just seems to me that in trying to cover both the totally inexperienced newbie and the more focused or experienced businessperson, they've virtually guaranteed that no matter who you are, a good chunk of this book will be irrelevant to you.

Which might not be as bad if it weren't so darn dry.

This book didn't really provide any information that wasn't easily accessible online. This would be a good book for someone with no ebay knowledge.

Excellent guide to selling on ebay with loads of information. As up-to-date as it can be in the fast lane ebay community. I'm already re-reading it!

I am pretty satisfied with the book. It was in very good condition and a great buy. The seller was prompt, efficient and did a great job.